Sunday, July 10, 2011

Sound familiar?

“I can think of at least two members of Parliament who could have been criticizing Murdoch five years ago, and said nothing because they were afraid,” said Chris Bryant, a Labour member of Parliament who serves on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee and who has been a persistent critic of Mr. Murdoch.

It was Mr. Bryant who, at a hearing on press standards in 2003, asked Ms. Brooks, then editor of The Sun, whether she had ever paid the police for information. She was seriously displeased with the tough tone of his questions; so were other tabloid editors who spoke at the hearing.

A few months later, Mr. Bryant was the subject of an article in The Mail on Sunday, illustrated by a photo of him in his underpants that he had posted on a gay dating site. (He does not make a secret of his sexuality.) The News of the World also printed the story, copying the account.

After Mr. Bryant spoke last fall in Parliament against tabloid tactics, he said a friend received telephone calls from two Murdoch underlings. “They told him, ‘You know Chris Bryant? Just let him know that this will not be forgotten,’ ” Mr. Bryant related.

3 comments:

I would say that Murdoch's enterprises in this country threaten and intimidate quite openly anyone daring to suggest they are sleazy. For example, Fox News now has on its website a pre-completed complaint form viewers can send to the IRS demanding that Media Matters' non-profit status be revoked.

Odd that Media Matters is just about the only entity in the country that's consistently fact-checking Fox News and reporting on its slanted and tendentious interpretation of the news....